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HW5: Translation

Go to Google Translate,
a site which allows you to type in text and translate it into another
language. By copying and pasting you can also backtranslate, i.e.,
translate back into the original language.

For this problem, you
must translate the following sentence (from a speech by Jon Stewart)
into three different languages and then translate back into English.

The
press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into
focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that
magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of
shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic.

The
release may contain its expansion to our problems bring them into focus,
illuminating the issues heretofore unseen or they can use the
magnifying glass to light on fire ants, and perhaps host a week of
concerts in the sudden epidemic ant,
unexpected dangerous flames.

Choose
one European language (not Portuguese), one African language (not Afrikaans), and one
Asian
language. Write down the languages, and the English backtranslations
associated with each one. Based on the backtranslations, do you think
that some languages are better matched with English than others with
respect to ease of translation? Give evidence for your answer using the
backtranslations as examples.

Find
three lexical or syntactic errors that are apparent from the
backtranslations, such as "press" becoming "release" and "shows"
becoming "concerts" (lexical), or "light ants on fire" becoming "light
on fire ants" and "ant epidemic" becoming "epidemic ant" (syntactic).
Discuss why you think they may have come about. Focus especially on
words that receive different translations in different languages, or
syntactic constructions that seem especially hard. How "fatal" are
these errors for being able to understand the backtranslation (and thus
possibly also the translation into another language)?

Feel
free to use any knowledge you have of the others languages in answering
this (though knowledge of other languages is not required to answer
this). Also, feel free to construct or use other examples of English
sentences that you backtranslate in answering this question.

Here are the actual translations(actually, ng and ang are more complicated than these
simple translations indicate, but you don't need to worry about that here):

bumili = bought
(active voice)

binili = bought
(passive voice)

libro = book

titser = teacher

ng = a

ang = the

Which words were translated well using the bags-of-words method? Discuss
any problems you see with the translation probabilities you calculated.
Can you think of any ways to change the method so that it would create
more accurate translation probabilities? (You don't have to actually do
it, just suggest possibilities.)

How much do you think language influences thought? Does it determine it,
influence it to some degree, or not influence it at all? Give
argumentation and evidence for your position. You can use outside
sources for answering this question, as well as the course slides. For
example, you might look at these: